ABSTRACT
Conventional approaches to the phenomenon of conspiracism rarely take desire into account, and in effect they often inadvertently pathologise conspiracy theories as merely the products of delusional thinking. But psychoanalysis and critical theory provide concepts that can help explain why conspiracist narratives came to be so popular. Psychoanalysis and critical theory provide concepts that can explain how conspiracy theories provoke desire, and at the same time allow critical analysis of their pathologisation. The chapter focuses on the authors who applied the psycho-pathological idea of conspiracy to social theory. It discusses writers who try to dissociate conspiracy delusions from common conspiracy theories. The chapter aims to trace the origins of the pathologisation of conspiracy theories in the discipline of psychiatry as it emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With its focus on the mechanism of projection, S. Freud’s theory has been influential in the analysis of conspiracy thinking, most obviously in the work of Hofstadter.
